Tag Archives: iBlueSky

Top 5 iPhone Applications for Productivity

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I cannot believe that I have never done a Top 5 list on this blog. In fact I have never done a blog entry based around a list before so here goes.

What better place to start than with a list for my Top 5 Productivity Tools on the iPhone.

I love my Apple iPhone. it has to be the single gadget that has most affected my productivity. Being an advocate of the Getting Things Done methodology, I love to talk about ubiquitous capture, and the iPhone is my capture device of choice.

In my opinion, Apple have brought together an amazing collection of tools that you can carry around as a single device in order to help you achieve what is required from your working day, as well as leaving some room for the fun and social aspects of the iPhone.

Here are my Top Five iPhone Apps for Productivity.

  • Calendar – Bit of an obvious one this but my life runs around my Calendar. The built in Calendar application is one of the most used apps on my iPhone. I sync to my desktop using MobileMe which now works fantastically after the initial teething problems. I can enter an appointment on my iPhone or on my Mac and they sync in the cloud without having to do anything. What a great technology and it means my calendar, and work schedule is always on my iPhone.
  • OmniFocus – OmniFocus is the current GTD application that I use. I have multiple projects configured both for my home and work lives and this application is in constant use. I capture my thoughts to OmniFocus and they sync again over MobileMe back to my Mac. I have not really played with the location aware profiles yet but I am sure I will.
  • EverNote – I record all my receipts and photo notes straight to Evernote. I have every invoice and purchase order in PDF from my business as well as all the other files that I want to share between multiple locations stored in EverNote. The Web application, Mac Application, and iPhone application make this a killer note taking and storing app for me.
  • iBlueSky – I recently reviewed iBlueSky, the newest Mind Mapping application for the iPhone. I have found myself using this app rather than creating paper Mind Maps. The developer assures me that my little niggles with it are being addressed in a later version for which I cannot wait.
  • Zenbe – Zenbe for me is about making lists. OmniFocus in my opinion is too heavyweight for simple recurring lists so I have tended to create these in Zenbe. These sync with Zenbe on the Internet and the very simple click process for ticking off your list items makes this my list manager of choice.

I would love to hear from the rest of you to see what your best apps are for productivity on the iPhone.

Thanks for your time.

Andrew..

iBlueSky – Mind Mapping for the iPhone and iPod Touch Review

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I recently did a review of MindMaker, the first Mind Mapping tool for the iPhone and iPod Touch. My review outlined a great concept but it was lacking some key features such as the ability to import and export maps and work in landscape mode.

I was very happy when i received an email from the creator of iBlueSky asking me to take a look at their app that provides competition for Mind Maker. I got the app installed and working right as I was leaving the house to attend the A4U Expo in London.

I was planning on writing the review when I got back from the A4U but I did get the chance to try it in the very first session of the A4U Expo. The first session was from Joost de Valik and was about Search Engine Optimization for WordPress.

iBlueSky

Rather than take notes for the session in my trusty Moleskine, I decided to give iBlueSky a live test and use it to take the notes in what was an excellent session.

iBlueSky is very similar in operation to Mind Maker, it is after all a Mind Mapping application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The entry was working out a treat. You are able to use landscape mode and the addition of branches is very straightforward and anybody who has used a Mind Mapping application would be able to pick ip up in no time at all.

There is a default map already installed for you to play around with. The map I created got quite big, quite fast and I found it easy to add new branches, sub branches and also to navigate around the map.

iBlueSky

This is in my opinion the best Mind Mapping tool to date for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There were a couple of little niggles which will hopefully get sorted for the next release. These were that the addition of new branches to a busy map sometimes overlapped existing branches. This made organization a bit cumbersome.

The branches were also quite difficult to move as it required an extremely accurate drag to move the branch and not the entire map. Some way of selecting a branch in drag mode would be great. The only other niggle is that when moving a branch, the sub-branches stayed put, creating a nesting overlapping issue.

All of the issues do not distract from what is a great app. Landscape mode works great, although the screen is restricted by the bars at the top and bottom.

iBlueSky

The killer feature that really separates this from Mind Maker is the ability to email the maps. Once the Map was created, I emailed it to myself.

The map arrives in four formats:

  • PNG Image
  • PDF Document
  • OPML For Importing into various mapping and flowchat apps
  • Freemind MM Format for use with Freemind, the Open Source Mind Mapping app

How cool is that!

Great app, and look forward to seeing more of these cool apps arise for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Oh, and for those of you interested in the session from Joost, which was fantastic as usual. Feel free to download the map by following the links below.

They even have a nice intro video.

Hope you found this of use, as usual, I would love to hear yout comments..